Customer Reviews:
 Beats the competition July 11, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I bought this for my wife as a replacement for her old MP3 player. It was getting old (4 years) and she wanted one that would store pictures and play video as well as play music. I researched all the players I could find for under $200 ($150 target price) and this unit was the only one for the price that did all three - and it does it very well. We figured 2GB was plenty of space for pictures, music and one full lenghth DVD and in the end, it was, but just barely (see complaint #2). We managed to put 600 songs (96 kbps - space was more important than quality), 250 pictures and one movie on it before filling it up - we'll get a memory card later to add more songs. While I was setting it up (breeze to set up, ripping CDs and converting video took most of the time), I only had two complaints, and really in the grand scheme of things - they are pretty minor.
1. I didn't like how it sync'd with Music Match - it was just too cumbersome to load everything into Music Match and sort through the songs - then again, I'm not from the iPod generation - I like to manually organize all my files on the computer to review them and not let some other program do that for me. Dragging and dropping worked a lot better for me.
2. Sansa Media Converter - what a pain! Of course, it should have been expected that a company primarily known for its memory cards would make this converter a memory hog. The video conversion process took forever and was very frustrating. First, to save space, I down-converted a DVD into a 160mb .wmv file (same program I use for my Windows Smartphone for videos) - then ran the program through the Media Converter to load onto the player. I figured it would keep the same size file when it transferred, but guess what? It blew the file up into a 880mb file! After some research on the web, I found some cheats to make the file smaller, but the quality wasn't that great - something my wife had to live with. If you are planning on playing videos - get the 4GB model - it's well worth the extra money and something we should have done, but I'm too stubborn. I was going to make this work one way or another. Oh yeah, one last thing on the Media Converter - convert the video into a .wmv file first, otherwise the converter will run almost through the entire video and then pop up telling you the conversion failed. Before I found the cheats, I converted the video into all types of formats, including Quick Time (mjpeg B) to see if Media Converter would convert the video into a smaller file. No luck yet, but I'll keep scouring the web for more cheats.
All-in-all, a great product - once I figured out these little tricks, everything worked smoothly and my wife really likes it. I would highly recommend this product to anyone looking for a great MP3 player for under $200 (and get the 4GB model)!
 Had some problems July 10, 2006
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I had a few problems with this mp3 player. It would not turn off at times, and sometime not even turn on.
Sansa e250 seals nano's doom!!! July 8, 2006
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Wow! What a player, soo many features such as:
-plays podcasts! Sweet!
-excellent voice recording!
-photos too!
-nice sized screen!
-SHARP looking!
-EASY to control with blue wheel!
-excellent music quality!
-easy to transfer files!
-20 hours of battery life!
-micro SD card slot for extra memory!
-I bought my player for only $144!
I've had this player for 3 days and can't put it down!
I feel bad for those who own the i-pod nano.
The only bad thing I can think of is it collects fingerprints quickly.
Awesome mp3 player! Let's see some more of this from SanDisk!
 Sansa e250 - A Great MP3 for the Money July 8, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This little unit does what I need it to do. I wanted something that could hold enough songs and battery charge to use while traveling. Although I manage computer hardware, I didn't want this to be a technological nightmare. Out of the box, it requires no software other than the standard Media Player and Windows Explorer; so ease of use is 5 stars. Navigation through the menus is fairly intuitive as well. I really like the combination of the buttons and the wheel. The buttons are a little small but certainly no worse than any others on the market. I haven't loaded any pictures or videos yet, so I can't speak to that. The only issue I have is that the earbuds supplied don't fit my ears. That's the most common complaint with MP3s so I wasn't surprised. The other units that I considered were the Creative Zen MicroPhoto and the Samsung YP-Z5. The Creative unit is a microdrive type and I didn't think it would hold up to the travel abuse. It was also heavier than the Sansa. The Samsung was more expensive and the screen did not seem as clear. Some of the other reviews (including the s/n ratio specs) have indicated that the sound on the Samsung is better, but I couldn't tell the difference. All-in-all I have been pleased with the ease of use, the size, the sound and the price.
Crisp Sound. July 7, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Pros
- Good sound quality
- Easy to transfer music from your harddrive
- Slot for micro SD card for memory expansion
- Compact and sturdy
Cons
- Hard to use the navigation buttons, but not a big deal once you got use to the system.
- Can charge only through usb port.
Overall it is a great little mp3 player.
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